Pilot Program

A few weeks ago I posted a story about a little boy in Guatemala being fostered by Lili's foster grandmother. He had been with the foster family since shortly before we went to pick Lili up in March, 2008 and after a visit to PGN they were going to be moving him from the foster home to an orphanage. I have since found out that he was not moved to an orphanage, but is still with the foster family. Apparently, there is no room at any of the orphanages for him and they asked the family to keep him.

During that same post I also mentioned that Guatemala is taking steps to begin a pilot program in an effort to become Hague compliant, which will then reopen adoption from Guatemala. They asked countries interested in participating in the program to send in their letter of intent. Surprising to many, the U.S. actually send in their letter of intent.

Today I read this information from Guatemala:

This is a translated article that was in a Guatemala City paper:

The National Council for Adoptions (CAN) issued a report yesterday that opened the process to start a pilot scheme for international adoptions which will be promoted this year with five countries that are interested.

Rudy Zepeda, a spokesman for CAN reported that the procedure was started in late 2009, when he took the call which was answered by 10 countries, who sent letters claiming to be interested in adopting Guatemalan children.

From last November 19th to Decemeber 3rd, the institution received documents from institutions from those countries that are interested in doing adoptions.

Each country must nominate two to four adoption agencies.

Since each application must be qualify by Guatemalan standards, CNA was informed of that each agency must research and analyze families wishing to adopt in order to score them for suitability.

The agencies experience in international adoptions will also be assessed, especially in cases of children with special needs such as sibling groups or children with physical or mental deficiencies.

So far, out of the 526 children that qualify for adoption only 238 have found Guatemala families. The rest are still hoping to have a home.

Zepeda believes that the children could be adopted abroad, but stressed that Guatemalan couples should always take precedence.

The spokesman explained that one of the requirements of the pilot is that the ANC is in charge of sending the data about the children who may be placed for adoption, not like before, when foreign families provided their requirements.

Zepeda said the process is in the phase of evaluating the agencies’ applications. Next March to April, the program will be started in five countries that pass the process.

From that moment, he started working in the adoption of children who are abandoned and have not been placed in Guatemalan families.

I am absolutely thrilled to know that things are moving forward. It can't happen soon enough for me and isn't happening nearly fast enough for the orphaned children in Guatemala, but at least something is happening and that's a good thing.